They’re baaack (Six Flags Dining Plans and Memberships)

In a stunning but not entirely unpredicted about face, the season dining plan much maligned by the current CEO is back. At Magic Mountain it’s $134.99 and provides a lunch and dinner on every visit for 12 months. A drink bottle is not included. Also interesting to note that it claims there’s a 3 hour break period between the meals (recently the break period has been 1.5 hours) AND the meal pass is only good at the home park.

There’s a new membership option that replaces the previous annual passes. The names are the same as the passes, but there’s some slight but meaningful differences. For example, at SFMM the Thrill Seeker level annual pass includes some Hurricane Harbor days (with significant blackouts) but the Thrill Seeker membership doesn’t include HH.

Looks like one more significant difference as well. Seems like the free drinks with membership is going away. This is what is on Great America's site today: "Best Deal of the Year Ends Labor Day... New Annual Memberships get free fountain drinks the rest of the year." In other words, after Labor day, another perk of membership is gone.

Does "membership" just mean "pass on payment plan?"

My question is, are these new things priced high enough to fix the babysitting problem?

They’re priced about the same as the previous annual pass options. The dining plan looks like it’s doubled and also reduced benefits (instead of two meals and snack it’s lunch and dinner- even the old base dining plan was one meal and a snack. Doing it this way makes it harder to use the second entitlement.)

Looking into the fine print it appears this is indeed a “pass on payment” plan and not a continuously renewing membership like the old one was.

Just saw on Facebook that parking at at least a couple parks has gone up to $40, preferred parking $75.

Babysitting must pay better than I remember.

That’s just going to hurt the clientele they actually want. I’m not going to, for example, take a side trip to Great Adventure on principle if parking is $40. But when the passes are still reasonably cheap and they include parking then the babysitting will continue. Re-introducing dining plans is just going to reinforce that behavior.

Something I noticed while looking at a menu board either last year or earlier this season at Great America. They started to change a lot of the meal pricing to say "Dining Pass +$3". Instead of the dining pass covering the whole meal like it originally did. It seemed like a major way to rip off people who bought the dining passes. I wonder with the higher cost of the dining passes now, if they will continue to charge money on top of the dining passes.

Six Flags was up-charging on the season dining for certain meals last year as well. I would expect the to continue to do so.

We had the premium dining plan when it was in place but generally didn't take advantage of both meals and a snack on each of our visits. While I am happy that it has returned it seems like such an odd move. The CEO spent the last few weeks complaining how Six Flags had become a babysitting service. Their solution is to reintroduce the things that made it that way in the first place? Six Flags is one rudderless ship.

Has the quality of the product been Increased as well?

ThemeDesigner:
Doing it this way makes it harder to use the second entitlement.

This is especially true if the parks are only open until 7:00PM and the dining establishments start closing at 5:00 or 6:00. If I go to a park, lunch comes at the earliest 3:00 or so after we've had a fair amount of rides in. Dinner then isn't until 7:00 or even 8:00. (Even under normal circumstances at home, we typically do not eat dinner until about 7:00 given work schedules...)

They are raising their pass prices significantly again fir 2023 while the parks are still mismanaged, poorly maintained and no major new attractions. This years pricing chased of 22% of attendance.

It looks like bankruptcy is the goal of the new CEO. They can’t charge more for these low quality parks before they make then nice places to visit. They aren’t even putting lipstick on the pig.

Meanwhile Cedar Fair is making their star parks higher quality experiences and has always kept their parks looking good. While offering a season pass and dining deal thst is a better value. These parks don’t really compete in markets with Six but I will travel to go to a CF park. Definitely not traveling to any Six park

On a whim today, I followed one of the ads that popped up on my computer for "Six Flags Memberships / Annual Passes". I found one piece of the fine print interesting: the 2023 season pass is only good through September 5th - no Halloween events at all. Is this something new, or has that been true for a while for the season passes?

It's new.

This is Six Flags way of eliminating the "Season Pass" membership. Nobody will buy that pass considering season parking is not included. Plus the membership ends after Labor Day 2023, so no Halloween or Christmas events.

• "This Seasonal Pass gives you unlimited visits only at Six Flags America on public operating days during the rest of the 2022 Seasonal and through 9/4/2023! Parking not included."

So the minimum membership I can now buy is the "Gold Thrill Seeker" for $95. Still pretty darn cheap. That one contains free parking, plus the ability to go to all North East Six Flags. I bought last years season pass for $39.00 + free parking. I never understood how in the heck they could sell it at that rate. I guess the answer is "They can't", thus the layoffs and new prices this year.

They've needed to raise prices for a long time... hopefully this adjustment will lead to a slightly better quality of service?

It's leading to shorter lines, but the lack of attendance is causing them to cut operating hours, shutter lots of restaurants, retail, reduce trains, and close whole sections of parks. Right now Ninja and Superman at SFMM are both closed until Fright Fest to save a few dollars on labor and maintenance. SFMM has 5 coasters down today for various reasons including Apocalypse's long term rehab. That makes them tied with Cedar Point for 3rd most coasters in the world. I'd rather be in a busy park with all the rides that's open until 10pm than an empty park with no restaurants, a huge number of non-operational rides and one train ops that closes at 5pm.

Ninja closed?! Now that's an issue :/